A Woman's Body Image Analysis

In the essay “A Woman’s Body: Put Down or Power Source” by Susan Sontag and excerpt from the film “America the Beautiful” directed by Darryl Roberts, it emphasizes the “power of beauty” .Women are fascinated with a beauty that is unreal, made-up, and doesn’t exist. Young adults are unhappy with their bodies because of the unachievable standards of beauty portrayed in social media, several aspects of video and print media. This unhappiness causes young adults to obsess with achieving an unrealistic body image which in turn, causes low self -esteem and excessive dieting which can also lead to eating disorders such as anorexia. Young adults feel rejected because of their looks, provoking dissatisfaction and unhappiness with their appearance.

Fearing weight gain eventually, can lead to anorexia, an eating disorder where one has become so obsessed with being thin that they deprived their body of food. In the film “America the beautiful” Gerren a model was unable to book any gigs as her body began to blossom as she hit maturity. Her hips were considered too wide, which caused Gerren to develop an eating disorder severely restrict her diet because she considered herself fat. The feeling that one should not eat to become or look like the model is upsetting. Especially since the images in magazines are an illusion. They are filtered airbrushed, and digitally altered, before released. These models do not look as glamorous as the media present them to us. However, the media encourages people to be like the models that are in magazines
The obsession with beauty dates back millennium, In the 1900s the ideal body image was a thin waist. The curvier you were in the waist the more desirable you were. The essay “A Woman’s Beauty”, asserted that women are taught to see their bodies in parts, and to evaluate each part separately. This is why women who probably already had nice legs, arms and other body features wore uncomfortable and dangerous corsets forcing the waist to shrink unnaturally, shifting internal organs in order to obtain an hourglass or figure 8 shape which then was